A Cautionary Tale of Teacher, Parent, Pupil & School
Here is a fable I'm working on which is inspired by this pair of Debbie Bliss cable socks and childhood innocence. The socks were a gift knit a few years ago for an unknown baby girl. My story is about how things could potentially go for a child at school....
Once upon a time there was a young teacher of mostly twelve-year-olds who was held up for her ability to have her pupils lickety-spit ready for the next phase of school. She came from a respected family and...
“Try not knowing your spellings/tables/manners in her class”
.. was the kind of thing frequently said admiringly in relation to her by one and all because she knew exactly how things ought to be. She was a tremendous teacher: that was a given, and existing parents sang her praises to every new batch… Adding to her allure, she was easy on the eye, and engaged to be married to a young doctor, for whom parents with medical connections were predicting a glittering future.
Then of course once upon a time too there was a young pupil who, let’s face it, didn’t tick all the school boxes or fall in neatly with any standard pie charts. A mild learning issue connected with a slight disability in her writing hand slowed her down in class. Her mother was a single parent and so busy working that she wasn’t around the school gate for longer than it took to pick up her daughter. Parents at the gate had opinions on many things, one of them being that that child had always seemed odd - a free spirit, you could say, but a free spirit turned sinister owing to the fact at twelve she was very developed... in full-cry puberty... and very free too with her talk of her new-found attraction to boys.... Twelve year old is as twelve year old does, some of them said...
The school was quite right, therefore, to disregard the consistent slog put in by the mother on the child's remedial work programme and deem her not really up to scratch in terms of parenting. The child’s openness of expression (which some misguided might consider charming and honest) clearly should be interpreted as unruliness bordering on troubled - and ample illustration that the mother absolutely had no idea how to teach the child to march in step
(no surprise really, though) (because the mother herself had an unfortunate habit of asking direct questions that nobody else would dream up in a thousand years).
On reaching the admirable teacher’s class, the child began turning in schoolwork that did no credit whatsoever to the teacher - if anything she became slower and her learning problems exacerbated. She quickly grew introverted and wary (the admirable teacher would also be inclined to add "sly" to that), and the school decided that the only answer was that she be sent for independent psychological assessment at a cost of 600 euros to the parent. The mother agreed readily, but said she didn't have the money and needed time to raise the fee...
(see?)(nobody else would actually say straight out..)
.... The assessment took place four months after it was first mooted and the admirable teacher gave of her own time to write a letter of referral to the psychologist, incorporating words such as "lazy", “careless”, “willful”, “inappropriate” and "refusal to mix" and told of her having only one school friend (referred to throughout as “friend”…. in parenthesis).
In the assessment the child registered at the lower end of academic average, but displayed marked artistic talent, and there was a conclusion from the psychologist that she would greatly profit from praise and encouragement in relation to this and every area, but in class in particular account should be taken that her handwriting would be slow due to the disability. Access to a laptop was recommended.
The mother had never thought otherwise but was gratified to have her view endorsed; she did express herself as somewhat taken aback at the language used in the school’s letter of referral, and having concern that it might conceivably comprise part of her child's permanent educational record and accompany her onward into senior level. The school was outraged... truly shocked.... that the admirable teacher’s report had been shown to the mother by the psychologist
"He GAVE it to you??", they exclaimed in horror.
A weekend intervened and the following week, for the first time ever the child won gold performance stars and was named Pupil Of The Week... Another week or so passed and things got back on an even keel. One day the principal suddenly announced she'd personally supervise one of the child's remedial sessions. The child went as instructed to her office at lunchtime, opened her exercise book and the principal said, "don't worry about that" and began questioning her about her social life outside school - who else did she know? what exactly did she get up to with her “friend”?, and how many boyfriends her mother had, and who exactly lived at home..? The child arrived home that day upset, confused and asking her mother if something dreadful was being kept from her... but of course that was just an unavoidable consequence of the school seeing to its duty of care to all its pupils.
And somewhere along the line that child inexplicably began to form the notion that teachers are not nice people and school was in all likelihood no place for her...